Top-Earning Town Can Finally Break Out the Bubbly

Happy Hour is coming to Weston.

For 170 years, alcohol has not been sold in this affluent suburban community 12 miles west of Boston. On May 10, voters approved a wine license for Weston's only supermarket. The license is expected to be issued this summer following a hearing by the board of selectmen, according to Donna VanderClock, town manager.

In 2007, Weston was only one of 12 Bay State communities that did not allow any type of alcohol sales. The other dry towns in Massachusetts are Alford, Chilmark, Dunstable, Aquinnah, Gosnold, Hawley, Montgomery, Tisbury, West Tisbury and Westhampton.

There are no large restaurants in Weston, but the town owns the historic Josiah Smith Tavern and is working on renovating and reopening the building to serve its original purpose, according to VanderClock.

The pub and adjacent Old Library had been underutilized for years. Community Preservation Act funds will finance the redevelopment of the two properties that sit on the edge of the town green, VanderClock said.

The act allows participating cities and towns to adopt a real estate tax surcharge up to 3 percent to pay for open space, historic preservation and community housing.

CPA funds were also used in the purchase of the Case Estates, a 62-acre former farm from Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum. The land was purchased by Weston in 2006 for $22.5 million. Case Estates gained fame in the 20th century as a farming and horticultural school for boys. It was donated to the arboretum by Mary Roby Case in 1944.

The land is contaminated from lead arsenate, a commonly used pesticide in apple orchards used in the early 1900s. The town is working with Harvard to clean up the land before the sale is complete, VanderClock said.

"All the open space here is part of what makes Weston such a pleasant place to live," she added.

In 2005, Weston was ranked ninth by Money magazine on its list of the top 25 earning towns in the country. The medium household income was listed as $180,549.

The median price of a single-family home in Weston rose to $1.27 million between January and May of this year from $1.1 million in the same period in 2007 - a 15.45 percent increase. The number of single-family sales decreased to 53 in January through May compared to 64 a year ago, according to The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman.

The town's DPW facility does not meet the high standards other municipal services offer, according to VanderClock. Funds were designated to design a new public works building at Town Meeting in the spring.

The main facility serving the Weston DPW is the former highway garage located on the Boston Post Road bypass, next to the police station. Weston police vehicles and many other municipal vehicles are serviced out of town because there isn't enough room at the outdated facility, Douglas P. Gillespie, member of the board of selectmen, said in a statement.

The new campus will provide maintenance bays equipped with lifts to service not only the DPW fleet, but also school buses, fire and police vehicles, and other municipal vehicles, he said.

In other development news, a 55-and-older development called Highland Meadows is under construction just off Route 20 on a 20-acre site. The 69-unit project was created after a special zoning district was put in place to accommodate it, VanderClock said. The complex will feature an affordable component.

"We have started to make affordable housing a priority in town," she noted.